"Steve…Stephen, sweetie, you're starting to worry me, wake up."
The throbbing in his head returned with unforgiving vengeance, as Steve fought hard to stay in the comfortable oblivion of dreamland.
"Come on, Hoss. Don't make me call the nurses."
A warm set of hands appeared on either side of his face, carefully caressing his cheek.
"Stephen! Look at me."
His blurry mind took a second to register whose voice he was hearing…and the implications thereof.
"Nancy?", he croaked and slowly proceeded to open his eyes, only to feel the headache worsen significantly against the bright lights of the ICU corridor.
"That's it. Come on, Hoss, you shouldn't be here."
With his mind working slow as molasses, Steve tried to stretch his sore back, temporarily confused when his left arm was restrained. As he tried to move it, the sharp pain radiating through the whole side of his chest was enough to bring him back to reality at a frighteningly fast pace.
Nancy was sitting next to him on the wooden bench he'd decided to collapse on, impatiently waiting to hear any updates about his partner's condition. Judging by the deserted hallways and the commotion still going on behind the closed opaque ICU doors, there wasn't any news.
"You know, what you did took some guts, I'll give you that. But you've got some pretty annoyed nurses waiting for you back at the station. Come on, we gotta get you back."
"I am not leaving."
Pushing himself against the bench when Nancy reached for his good arm, Steve slowly shook his head, enough to get the point across without inducing another bout of vomiting. He could see the petite doctor stare at him worriedly, before crossing her arms in front of her white coroner's jacket and letting out a deep sigh.
"It's been a long day. And a long night. I think you'd make everybody a lot happier if you crawled back into that hospital bed waiting for you at the end of this hallway…instead of…instead of having Tanner sneak in some dress clothes, ripping out your IV's and releasing yourself from medical care. You are in no condition to be wandering the hallways."
Steve swallowed the bile rising in the back of his throat once again and ran a hand through his hair, careful to avoid the newly stitched cut on his temple.
"I am not leaving my partner.", he said sternly and looked over at Nancy, who seemed unimpressed with his stubbornness.
"Oh, don't worry, at this pace you are going to join him shortly, Hoss. Is that what you want? Being hooked up to machines? Needing a blood transfusion because you ripped your elaborate assortment of stitches wide open, when you should be resting your shoulder? You think Mike would approve of this nonsense?"
Glaring at the doctor at the sheer mentioning of his partner's name, Steve tried to straighten out, only to feel his sore muscles protest. Instead of granting her an answer, he let his head drop to his chest again, ready to close his eyes and resume his waiting position, when her hand reappeared on his cheek.
"Don't you dare to go back to sleep on me now…hey. Stay with me, Steve.", when he glanced back up, her blue eyes had turned a lot warmer, "Did you…did you hear anything else from the doctors yet? I have only gotten bits and pieces of what truly happened. Half of homicide doesn't know what is going on. The guys are worried. Olsen is having a staff meeting about things right now. That's why I am here, because Tanner caved and admitted to what you made him do while he was on duty to watch you. And here I thought you were brighter than that. You'll be lucky if the nurses don't sedate you when you get back there. No wonder Olsen wanted to have somebody with you at all times. Is that what you guys do when the other partner gets hurt? Lose your mind and any sound reasoning along with it?"
Looking back up when Nancy's voice reached an unhealthy pitch, Steve slowly shook his head, before adjusting the sling that kept his left arm immobile.
"I haven't heard anything since they did the surgery to sew up my shoulder. The doctors said that there is a lot of bruising on Mike's back where the beams fell on us. Some cracked ribs. They're worried about his neck and want to make sure nothing got pinched there. I think the plan is to keep him sedated for a little while to allow for all that swelling to subside. They're even worried about blood clots forming from all the trauma."
Across from him, the doctor glanced down, digesting the information before sighing.
"That is the best approach for these types of injuries. And the best thing for Mike, honestly. He will be able to rest instead of enduring all that pain. Something you should consider yourself. You're fresh out of surgery and those painkillers are going to wear off shortly. There'll be hell to pay if you don't let the nurses give you a shot for the pain before that happens."
"Jacko and his guys pulled us out of the rubble and he said that Mike saved my life."
Steve was beginning to feel his voice break when he said those words. Biting the inside of his lip, he drew in a deep shuddered breath when his mind took him back to the fateful moment he realized their hitman had activated a grenade in his pocket. And how oblivious he'd been to that deadly threat until Mike dragged him out of harm's way.
"I heard about the explosion. It took them a while to dig you guys out."
"Part of the roof had caved in as a result from it. Several of the roof joints came down right where Mike and I landed. Turns out that he used his own body to shield me. That's why I got off with just a few scratches and he's…he's in there fighting for his life…damnit."
"He's going to be alright, trust me.", Nancy said and put a warm hand on his thigh, as her eyes welled up with tears, "He's a very stubborn man. He won't let something like that stop him. He's in the best care possible now. We just have to wait for him to bounce back. And it might just take another couple of days until he regains consciousness. But you can't be sitting here watching over him all that time."
"He'd do it for me."
"Oh, for god's sake, will you listen to yourself? You two and that…that crazy bond you have got going on. Would you just relax? He's in good hands. You can't do anything to help him at this point. But you can at least help yourself."
When he didn't answer right away, Nancy squeezed his forearm, and pointed at the lower floor.
"Tell you what, Hoss. Since you require babysitting to keep you out of trouble…these were Olsen's words, not mine, by the way…how about we head back and get some pain meds into you, and then we can have some coffee together down in the cafeteria. Talk about things. See if I can bore you enough to get you to lay down and sleep for a few hours?...Besides, your IV port is halfway detached, you're bleeding all over the floor and you got your dress shirt on inside out."
Steve sighed, glancing down at his chest to see that Nancy was right, before letting his eyes drift back up at the opaque doors that had stayed unmoving for way too long. And somewhere, behind them, was his partner. The man who had nearly sacrificed his own life to save that of his younger partner.
And according to Mike Stone's own words, that was the true definition family.
Blinking away the tears forming in his eyes, Steve nodded faintly, before allowing Nancy to pull him back up on his feet and head down to the nurse's station.